December 2007 S á nchez Commentaries and Sample Homilies
FIRST SUNDAY OF ADVENT (A)
December 2, 2007
Swords into Plowshares, Nukes into Nutrients
Patricia Datchuck Sánchez
Isa 2:1-5
Rom 13:11-14
Matt 24:37-44
Today, wherever Christians gather for worship, they will hear Paul’s call to conversion and Matthew’s exhortation to vigilance and Isaiah’s vision of the end of war. Isaiah’s words of peace and justice will be spoken on the battlefields of Baghdad, in the bunkers of Afghanistan and on the killing fields of Darfur. For the most part, the prophet’s vision remains just that — a vision without legs, a “dream” that seems too idealized to be enacted, mere words on paper.
We contentious human beings seem unable or unwilling to bring the prophet’s vision to life. So many times we listen but do not follow the demands this vision entails. Our split between hearing and doing is not unlike the ambience of the baptism scene in Frances Ford Coppola’s film “The Godfather.” The Mafia Don stands in church with his family, speaking the promises that will bless his newly baptized daughter as belonging to God and to the church. Coppola cuts back and forth between the church scene and scenes of murders taking place at that moment around the city — murders the Don has ordered. His murderous acts juxtaposed against his words effectively make those words a lie.
Many continue to believe that Isaiah’s vision foresaw the impossible. Yet, as the prophet has pointed out, the impossible must somehow be fused with the necessary. Something new and seemingly beyond all effort or genius or ecstatic longing or even imagining must come to be. This is absolutely crucial to the survival of humankind, to religious faith, to a civilized sense of the human — crucial to the fate of the earth.
Some have tried to beat swords into plowshares. For example, in September 1980, Daniel Berrigan, Molly Rush (mother, grandmother, founder and “soul” of the Thomas Merton center in Pittsburgh) and a group of friends entered the General Elective Reentry Division plant in King of Prussia, Pa., and, with small hammers, attempted to dismantle a Mach 12 missile. Berrigan described the missile as “a first-strike nuclear horror” with a payload of “technological doomsday” (Isaiah, Spirit of Courage, Gift of Tears, Fortress Press, Minneapolis: 1996). Berrigan, Rush and the others were arrested, arraigned and punished. Many who wield both civil and religious authority, including Berrigan’s superiors, condemned the actions of those peacemakers as too radical and outside the pale of acceptable behavior.
Authorities also criticized Cindy Sheehan when she took a similarly “unacceptable” approach to protesting the Iraq war and encamped outside President Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Texas. Those who speak out for peace and justice and who are not afraid to incur the wrath of the reputable — like Berrigan, Rush and Sheehan — function like Isaiah and the prophets of old. Because of them, the vision continues to live. Despite our desires to the contrary, this vision is still able to call forth in us a radical response that can bring about the changes that will shepherd it to fruition.
Isaiah, along with Paul and Matthew, has set the tone for yet another Advent season, reminding us that waiting for Jesus’ return requires more than sentimental expectation. We cannot simply hope for justice; we are to take those actions that will establish justice. Hands that wield the weapons of war (swords in Isaiah’s day, missiles and “smart bombs” in our own) must be turned toward deeds of peace. Nuclear energy, now harvested for destruction, must be redirected and focused on feeding the world’s hungry. Votes that condone wars and aggression must be rethought. Mutual animosities are to be surrendered, sometimes without the satisfaction of proving oneself to be “in the right.” If peace and justice are ever to happen on the global level, their seeds must be planted and tended in individual hearts. What “sword” will you surrender in order to build peace? The choice is ours; the season is now; and Christ is the reason.
Isa 2:1-5
Although he lived in the eighth century BCE, the life and times of Isaiah of Jerusalem were not so different from our own. His was an age of war and rumors of wars, of duplicity and deceit and conniving in high places. Tiglath Pileser III had ascended to the throne in Assyria and was vigorously pursuing a course toward domination of the then-known world. Israel threw in its lot with Syria and invaded Judah in an attempt to co-opt the southern kingdom into a coalition against Assyria. In the end, despite Isaiah’s advice and protests to the contrary, Israel’s ill-conceived alliances with foreign powers proved futile and the northern kingdom fell to Assyria. Judah became a vassal state of Assyria, and the prophet’s visions of shame, death and destruction became a harsh reality. Nevertheless, Isaiah did not stop allowing the voice of God to speak through him and address the political ambitions and moral turpitude of his contemporaries.
In today’s first reading, Isaiah’s words constitute a vision of better times when the nations, along with the people of Judah, would recognize that God’s ways and God’s instructions (v. 3) were the true path to life and fulfillment. Isaiah’s vision portrays a converted people who had begun, once again, to look to God for answers, instead of following their own counsel and reaping the unfortunate consequences of doing so. By accepting God’s instruction or Torah, Isaiah’s contemporaries were, in effect, acknowledging God as the ultimate judge of all their political disputes. Although, as Walter Brueggemann has pointed out, the coming rule of God is portrayed poetically and theologically, the consequences of that rule would be profoundly political (Texts For Preaching, Westminster John Knox Press, Louisville, Ky.: 1995). After its initial image of a parade of nations streaming toward Jerusalem for learning, Isaiah’s vision conjures up a “court of appeal” where problems will be divinely judged. In this court where God presides, war is not an option and cannot be embraced as a national policy. In order for the divine policy of peace to take effect, however, all parties must submit to God and relinquish the right to establish justice by their own hand.
Those who would reap the benefits of Isaiah’s vision were to do their part by dismantling their weapons of war and engaging them in a completely different type of activity — one that builds rather than destroys and that reverences a culture of life rather than one of death. This move to a “peacetime economy,” says Brueggemann (op. cit.), requires more than good intentions. The move also requires procedures to be put in place so that the resources and capacities of the economy are deployed in peaceful ways. It is not enough just to put aside the sword or the spear. These must be transformed from instruments of death to instruments that will preserve life.
Brueggemann’s insights and Isaiah’s vision prompt contemporary readers of the prophet’s words to determine how the sin of war can be not only ended but repented. How can the energies that make such war possible be redirected toward lasting peace and authentic justice? It will happen only when animosity is replaced by mutual respect, where fear surrenders to hope and where hatred and apathy yield to purposeful caring in the human heart. No such growth is possible as long as we keep weapons at the ready “just in case.”
Rom 13:11-14
While Isaiah envisioned a future in which the weapons of war would be transformed into implements for building peace and justice, Paul called for believers to “put on the armor of light” and thereby to conduct themselves in a manner worthy of welcoming the one in whom all peace and justice find their origins. It wasn’t enough merely to hope for better times; Paul urged his readers to allow their hope to press them into active service. Because Paul had so devoted himself to establishing the reign of God, he could readily hold himself out to them and to us as a model. By his own admission, Paul wrote what has been called his “gospel” to the Roman churches in order to introduce himself and the preaching and teaching he wished to promulgate in Spain from a Roman home-base. He defended his Law-free gospel and paired it with an exposition of the union among all peoples (Jews as well as gentiles) that had been effected by Jesus’ death and resurrection (Rom 9-11). Beyond the stated motives, Paul’s letter appears also to have been influenced by what Daniel Harrington has described as “modified apocalyptic dualism” (Romans: The Good News According to Paul, New City Press, Hyde Park, N.Y.: 1998). A notion also reflected in the Dead Sea Scrolls preserved by the community of Qumran, this manner of thinking is dualistic in that it contrasts good and evil, light and darkness. It is modified in that God’s sovereignty is a given, and the reign of the dark powers is temporary and subject to God’s plan. It is apocalyptic in that it is based on the conviction that God will bring all dualistic tensions to an end and vindicate the righteous in the sight of all.
In the midst of this modified apocalyptic dualism, however, believers in Jesus and in the Christ-event are empowered to live by faith and in accordance with the Spirit, thereby already sharing in the end-time blessings of justification, peace, reconciliation, redemption and salvation. On the strength of that conviction, Paul could speak of “salvation” being “nearer now than when we first believed” and of “putting on the Lord Jesus Christ” so as to make the good news live in a world so much in need of its message.
Paul’s point in this passage, explains Philip F. Esler, is that followers of Christ should be now as they will one day become (Conflict and Identity in Romans, Fortress Press, Minneapolis: 2003). The image of future salvation serves to tell them who they are and should be in the present, not solely to warn them that the future is near. Paul contrasts the day that is beckoning with the night they are currently experiencing and calls for readers to be people of the day and of the light rather than the darkness. Paul’s point is not that believers need to get themselves in order because there is so little time left but rather that the anticipated future provides a model for their identity and behavior right now.
For us, reading these words from the perspective of the 21st century, Paul’s message seems to say: Advent is a time to wait for the coming Christ. But there is no need to wait to face the challenges of Christian living. Live in peace now; work for justice now; be reconciled now, and by so doing, bear witness with your lives to the Christ who came, who comes and who is ever present among us.
Matt 24:37-44
Today’s Gospel encourages Advent believers to live with a purposeful readiness for welcoming the coming Christ so that they will have no regrets when the time comes. Some of us tend to wait until it is too late to remedy a situation and all we can do is say, “If only I had known, I would have done something different.” To that end, the sacred writers of Advent remind us that we do indeed know and believe that Jesus will come among us again. We do know that coming will be characterized by judgment. As our liturgical guide for this year, Matthew will tell us that preparing for judgment will consist in reaching out and alleviating the hungers, thirsts and other such needs of God’s least ones wherever these needs present themselves (25:31-46). Though we are duly informed and aware, we do not always allow this knowledge to penetrate the practical aspects of our lives, hence the annual call to alertness that is Advent.
First among our teachers, in this text, is the mythic figure of Noah, who took God’s word to heart and prepared for what was to most of the world an unpredictable calamity. Noah’s example of trusting obedience testifies against the human penchant for procrastination even in the face of imminent danger. Though we are warned of an oncoming storm or hurricane or tornado, many among us tend to think, “Well it could never happen here, or to me!” As a result, we may find ourselves unprepared and unable to cope with what can prove to be an overwhelming turn of events.
A pair of men and a pair of women offer the next lesson to Advent believers. At the coming of the Son of Man, warns the Matthean Jesus, one shall be taken and the other left. To the casual observer, both pairs of workers appear to be the same, but in an act of God’s judgment, the two are separated. One has been deemed ready for the reign, the other not. Those who await the returning Christ must go about their daily duties in a spirit of preparedness because we will have no forewarning. At the time of Jesus’ eventual coming, there will be no more time for “getting ready.”
A final lesson is communicated to believers in the person of the householder caught unaware by a thief in the night. Unaware, he was lulled into a false security by savoring the present to the detriment of a future-oriented existence.
While we, as a world, await the second return of Jesus, Advent also reminds us that we individuals will also know a “personal parousia”: our encounter with Jesus at the end of our life’s journey. The end of our journey is as certain as it is unknown. Therefore, watchfulness and hope are in order as we live this day, this hour, this moment, as worthily as if it were our last.
Dec 2, 2007 Sample Homily
First Sunday of Advent
God Keeps His Promises
by Fr. James Smith
It’s one thing to believe in some final divine intervention. But it’s another thing to believe that God is intervening here and now.
The first reading today talks about peace, yet Israel seemed to be forever at war. Isaiah spoke of all nations coming to them, yet Israel admitted to being the least of nations. Yet Israel hoped in itself and in its God. They were under no illusions — you do not get beaten up by every nation in sight and still think you are powerful. So they could have got stuck thinking that they were the least nation, but they went on to believe that they were also chosen as God’s favorite. Against all odds and enemies, Israel expected God to be on their side. They had hope because God had promised them. And they believed in that promise.